Patriots bench Mac Jones after brutal interception vs Colts late in 4th quarter

With two minutes left in their game against the Indianapolis Colts, the New England Patriots benched Mac Jones for backup Bailey Zappe.

This came after Mac Jones threw an interception that should have been a touchdown to take the lead. The Patriots’ defense then came up with a stop and head coach Bill Belichick made the move to Bailey Zappe ahead of the final drive of the game.

For his part, Jones did his best to stay positive, telling his offensive line to “Go win it.”

Mac Jones ended his game in Germany having completed 15 for 20 passes on the game. He also had 170 yards and the interception. He did, unfortunately, miss multiple potential touchdown passes. Jones was also harassed by the pass rush all day.

The move came with the Patriots down by four in need of a touchdown. However, it didn’t end up working for New England. After making moderate progress, Zappe faked a spike and took a shot over the middle. There were multiple Colts there and it was an easy interception to seal the game.

"A Bailey Zappe fake-spike leads to a game-sealing interception. Words that I didn't wake up this morning here in Germany think that I'd be saying."- Rich Eisen

"I'm in disbelief of just the sequence… [Bill Belichick's] look right there sums up their season…"- Jason McCourty pic.twitter.com/IiKNzsexm9

— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) November 12, 2023

Indianapolis won 10-6. With that loss, New England fell to just 2-8 on the season.

This wasn’t the first time that Mac Jones was benched for Bailey Zappe this season. Jones was also benched in blowout losses to the Cowboys and Saints. However, Bill Belichick said after each of those games that the benching was to prevent an injury. That was clearly not the case this week.

Mac Jones was a first round pick in the 2021 NFL Draft out of Alabama. After being named a Pro Bowler in his rookie season, Jones has quickly fallen back down to Earth as the team has struggled on the offensive side of the ball. Much of the blame has fallen on Jones’ shoulders as the quarterback.

Nick Saban provided advice to Mac Jones amid struggles

Amid his struggles with the New England Patriots, Mac Jones’ former head coach Nick Saban shared some advice with Jones on how to get things under control.

“I used to call Mac, John McEnroe because he was a tennis player in high school. I said, ‘When you mess up in tennis, you get to throw your racket.’ You can’t do that in football. You’ve got 10 other guys looking at you. You’ve got to have a positive attitude. I shouldn’t know if you completed a pass or didn’t complete the pass based on your body language because your body language is affecting everybody else,” Saban said.

“And he grew out of that in the year that he started here and had a great year, he wasn’t that way at all. So, I don’t know what’s happening now. I don’t get to see these games. Sunday is a big work day for us in terms of our preparation. So, I don’t get to see him play all the time. I know the Patriots aren’t doing great. I don’t hear great things about how he’s doing, but I think if he settles in and just focuses on the next play and not get upset and frustrated, he’ll probably play a lot better.”